Arazoo Case Study: AMD Architects
A Conversation with Anderson Mason Dale Architects
Anderson Mason Dale Architects (AMD) is known for providing a full range of architectural services for clients who are building universities, schools, libraries, justice facilities, office buildings, cultural venues and housing. In their 40-year history, they’ve been twice honored with the AIA’s Firm Award for their distinguished body of work and have received numerous local, regional and national design awards.
As AMD has grown and their projects have become more complex, they realized they needed a better system to collect, share, and protect their valuable research and knowledge that could be more flexible than a database or spreadsheet. Lacking such a system, firm leaders knew they were losing critical knowledge between projects and needlessly repeating research with each new project they started — but they couldn’t find the time to design a useable solution on their own. They had tried complicated databases and spreadsheets, but usability proved cumbersome, and its content quickly grew stale. When the team at AMD was introduced to Arazoo, they recognized the advantage that a knowledge management platform could provide. They saw the opportunity to capture and track firm resource usage, add “lessons learned” and more information with each new project, and effortlessly recall that up to date product knowledge with just a few clicks.
“Our greatest challenges with product information is making sure that what is available to us is current and making sure that all team members are clear about which products have been selected,”said AMD Associate and Specification Writer, Suzanne Dupée Minear. Suzanne has come to expect that there will always be last minute changes to her specifications due to a client changing their mind or budget concerns. Before being introduced to Arazoo, these changes would have made it overly time-consuming to update the drawing details with the product that appears in the specifications. But with Arazoo, Suzanne will be able to quickly suggest product alternates to the design team or review their preferred choices — all within the Arazoo platform.
“Another challenge has been communication across offices and firms where product selections may be made in one location, specified in another, and drawn in a third.”
Arazoo will allow everyone on the project team to keep all of this information up-to-date in one centralized place, allowing for organized collaboration and communication across firms and project teams. As AMD develops more standard processes for exporting data, the ability to easily and quickly share information between members, both within and outside of the office is a valuable benefit.
AMD sees Arazoo as a great opportunity to build a digital library of shared material and product knowledge. “Unlike traditional ‘binder’ libraries, Arazoo offers us the opportunity to manage web resources while tracking project history and adding private information that only our firm can see,” Suzanne added. For AMD, this valuable additional information includes notes about client preferences and standards, LEED® and environmental data, and preferences based on project experiences.
By adopting Arazoo, AMD will benefit from a more fluid — and accurate — exchange of information and wisdom throughout their firm. Arazoo becomes the go-to place for anyone in the firm to easily organize all their research and knowledge on product and material standards, emerging technologies, vendors and sources, as well as inspiration and original thought leadership. When everyone inside AMD has access in just a few clicks to the same reliable information, they will be able to collaborate more effectively with outside project members, and will have created a valuable new firm asset.
